While it's currently cool to love Google's Android and hate Apple's iOS, especially because of the massive difference in philosophy (open vs. closed), Google still retains a fair amount of control over the Android Market. This was demonstrated this week Google employed its remote kill switch for two Android Market applications, removing them from all Android devices on which they were installed.

As has already been alluded to, the difference is that if Google do this, one is perfectly free to go online and install the .apk without using the market.

With iOS, one has to either set up a private (<=100 users) app repository, or gaolbreak the iPhone, which voids the warranty.

Because in this case, it was malware, it is acceptable, however I feel that close attention needs to be paid in order to ensure that google do not abuse this power, despite users having the option to install from third party sources.

Did Google deliver a message "application blah installed on your device has been found to do A and B. Google will now remove this program as it has been removed from the app market for being unsafe; allow or deny?"

I'd be ok with that; gives clear explanation why the app is going away and the potential for a user to decline. Now, if Google did it a-la-Amazon secret delete; that's a problem.